CAIRO

The Egyptian government said Monday that 33,247 Egyptians had returned home from next-door Libya since Feb. 16.

In statements to Egyptian state television, Al-Anani Hammouda, security chief in Egypt's Matrouh province, said that some 787 Egyptians had returned home via the Salloum border crossing on Sunday alone.

Sunday's figures brought the total number of Egyptians to have returned home from crisis-hit Libya via the Salloum crossing since Feb. 16 to 25,910.

Egypt's Civil Aviation Ministry said Monday that another 262 Egyptians had arrived home on a flight from Tunisia.

The ministry added that a total of 7,337 Egyptians had arrived home from Libya on board 20 flights.

Earlier Friday, Egypt's Foreign Ministry announced that 25,529 Egyptians had returned home from Libya earlier this week.

Numerous Egyptian expatriates fled Libya last month after Egypt launched a series of airstrikes against suspected Daesh sites in Libya's eastern city of Darnah.

"Daesh" is the Arabic acronym for the "Islamic State of Iraq and Levant" (ISIL) militant group, which last year overran vast swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, winning the allegiance of various militant groups across the Middle East.

The Egyptian airstrikes came one day after a video appeared online purportedly showing the execution of 21 Egyptian nationals by masked Daesh militants in Libya.

In recent months, the Egyptian government – citing Libya's precarious security situation – had advised citizens against travelling to the fractious North African country.

Libya has remained a source of concern for neighboring Egypt since it descended into violence and chaos following the 2011 ouster and death of strongman Muammar Gaddafi.

Abu Bakr Abdel-Karim, head of Egypt's official statistics agency, told The Anadolu Agency earlier that there were no specific figures on the number of Egyptians living in Libya.